Monthly Archives: April 2007

The fractal nature of the generalization that education matters holds across time and space. Irrespective of the granularity of analysis, education aids development through the intermediate step of economic growth. At the finest level of detail, an educated individual anywhere … Continue reading →

This is obscene. The way we get our priorities mixed up is seriously obscene and disturbing. A bunch of people — clueless retards, more descriptively — get offended by some Hollywood actor kissing some silly young woman on the cheek … Continue reading →

Very young children in Christian households (especially in the US) are led to believe that if they are good, Santa Claus will bring them gifts during Christmas. It is rather cute to see their eyes light up with eager anticipation … Continue reading →

Today I was favored with an email from the PanIIT alumni organization. The subject of the email was “Required for IIT alumni Reach 4 India! organisation” and the text was about their search for a “Chief Operations Sevak” and a … Continue reading →

Gordon Dryden, the New Zealand-based co-author of The Learning Revolution, and more importantly a dear friend of mine, disagrees with many of the key points proposed in Charles Murray’s series of three articles from the Wall Street Journal mentioned in … Continue reading →

When I stumble upon something that clearly expresses how I feel about a subject, it is a sheer delight to read. Brain candy to be enjoyed and hoarded. I immediately thank the god of the world wide web (aside: I … Continue reading →

One of the rewards of writing a blog is the occasional email expressing gratitude for something which resonated with the reader. I get those emails fairly regularly on a variety of topics. The flip side is of course the rant … Continue reading →

Everything you have ever wanted to know about the One Laptop Per Child but never dared to ask has been answered in an excellent feature titled The Laptop Crusade by Tekla Perry in the April 2007 issue of the IEEE … Continue reading →

The past is never dead. It’s not even past. All of us labor in webs spun long before we were born, webs of heredity and environment, of desire and consequence, of history and eternity. Haunted by wrong turns and roads … Continue reading →

An accident is not a crime, and a crime is not an accident. That distinction kept playing in my mind as I thought of the incident in which a drunken driver, Alistair Pereira, killed seven and injured eight pavement dwellers … Continue reading →

Alex Singleton, President of the Globalisation Institute, a European think tank, argues against the OLPC and says that computers should be left to the market economy. “The very worst idea in international development circles is the One Laptop Per Child … Continue reading →

Well, well, what do you know! Just as I had finished a series on why India needs to have cities for its economic growth and therefore development (see the last post in the series, Make No Little Plans), my friend … Continue reading →

Lee Iacocca asks that question in his book. His concern — correctly, in my opinion — is with the lack of leadership in the US. But with some substitutions in the names and a few other changes, he could as … Continue reading →

To get back to Pune from Mumbai on Saturday, since I had some luggage, I took a cab instead taking a bus or a train as I usually do. Later, on the expressway, I regretted not taking the bus as … Continue reading →

Very cheap in India. Alistair Pareira, a 21 year old, in a fit of drunken driving, ran over a bunch of sleeping people a few months ago in Mumbai. He successfully killed seven (including one pregnant woman and two children) … Continue reading →

Think Big There is something in the nature of the world that it is sometimes paradoxically more difficult to make small changes than to make big ones. Logically consistent big changes are more likely to succeed because of the interconnectedness … Continue reading →